When does it happen?

Jim Wilmore caught my attention this morning posting the link to the Smokey Yunick 1963 Chevrolet for sale. I looked at the pictures and I was suddenly back in 1963. Talk about a time machine??? It was sort of like when the Delorean was charged by the lighting bolts in "Back to the Future". Got me to thinking (no comments from you Johnny M. or Billy B.)

At what point in life to you begin to relish looking back more than looking forward? When I was growing up, it was always looking forward to the next race, the next birthday, getting a driver's licence, graduating high school, driving a race car, the next vacation, retirement. Suddenly, and I can't put my finger on a date, I became obssessed with looking back. Admittedly, Racers Reunion threw gasoline on that fire of the past as it has allowed me not only to see pictures of the past but also allowed me to connect with so many heroes of those past years.

I get mixed signals everywhere. For instance, a sermon in church not long ago stressed that we sh ould always look to the future, yet the basics of my religion all pertain to what happened in the past. I read reports on the progress of the local county government and everything is directed to the future, yet great effort and large sums of money are put into preserving the past. I hear the news coming from our nation's capitol and it's all about the future of our economy, our health care, and whatever else can be determined as a "hot button" issue to inflame the partsians on either side, yet Washington, D.C. is full of memorials to the past that made us the great nation we are.

I have to admit, I suppose, that my quickly approaching 64th birthday adds impetus to reliving the past as ,there is certainly more of my past than there will be of my future. But, even so, why is it that many of the things I am looking forward to these days are about the past? The Hillsborough, North Carolina event on August 28th? The Augusta, Georgia event on September 18th? The Memory Lane Racers Reunion Hall of Fame inductions on October 17th?

It is also sort of strange that I will go visit the NASCAR Hall of Fame Museum in Charlotte soon, although I don't know when yet, but I have no desire whatsoever to actually attend the Charlotte race there in October. I probably will watch the DVD "Thunder in Carolina" which is a Hollywood farce of a racing movie that contains many good shots from the 1959 Southern 500, but I will most likele not watch the race from Pocono on Sunday.

Guess Jim Wilmore and his post this morning just really rocked my coffee over-stimulated brain (again Johnny M. and Billy B., please no comment). If I'm living in the past, it's not such a bad place. At least there Fireball Roberts can speak his mind and Joe Weatherly and play his jokes and Smokey Yunick and make the NASCAR rule book seem like a standup comics routine. It was simplier then, for sure. But it's better now because I've got so many friends here to share all this with.

Tim

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What a change! It's been awhile since I've checked in and I'm quite surprised. It may take me awhile to figure it our but first look it's really great.


updated by @tim-leeming: 12/05/16 04:02:07PM

OK Tim im steel in for 10 dallars

Hay i might go 20 i had a good week

Good posting, Tim.....you & I have many of the same thought processes - maybe it's the age since we're pretty close.....or maybe it's that great minds think alike (don't laugh). Seriously, I believe we want to (and do) remember those experiences which brought much pleasure to our lives & I think many of us believe that we'll never be able to have & enjoy those experiences again. I know I tend to think that way. Obviously, there are many of our heroes from the racing world who are gone & we know we'll never be able to appreciate/enjoy seeing those talents again......as well as experience the pleasure of their personalities; but I also think that in trying to look into the future, we can't see the liklihood that our racing world will ever be as good or pleasurable as it was in the past............I'm not even going to get into the winds of change coming out of Washington these days. Although we have already passed many of the milestones you mentioned (driver's license, age 21, graduation, 1st car, etc.), I would like to believe we still have many pleasurable things to look forward to..........in my case, being able to see children & especially grandchildren experience some of those same milestones which we enjoyed so much. As for our racing worlds, I, too, hope to visit the HoF in Charlotte one day & have all those racing memories & personalities come flooding over me again. We won't see those historical racing environments again, but we can certainly derive pleasure from having them race through our minds again.I can't say at what age we might tend to think more in the past than to the future, but I would hope that going forward we still have the capacity & liklihood to build many precious memories (maybe in different areas) just as we have in the past.